Sunday, March 06, 2005

295: The Hobbit's Brain

Falk and her colleagues made a careful study of the size and shape of the Hobbit brain [based on CT scans], and then they created three-dimensional models of the brains of other hominids. They compared it to the brains of average female humans, a female pygmy, and a microcephalic girl. (They chose females because the Hobbit skull is believed to belong to a female.) The scientists also looked at endocasts of fossil hominids.

Zimmer describes four evolutionary hypotheses about the evolution of Homo floresiensis. (Not Homo floresensis.) Each has slightly different implications for human evolution, especially our understanding of the development of large brains in the genus Homo.